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Do you support vouchers that allow public money to pay for private or church-based schools?

In a bold bid to revamp public education, a suburban district south of Denver has begun handing out vouchers that use public money to help its largely affluent residents send their children to private and church-based schools. The Douglas County School District experiment is noteworthy because nearly all voucher programs nationally aim to help children who are poor, have special needs or are trapped in failing public schools. Douglas County, by contrast, is one of the most affluent in the U.S., with household income nearly double the national median, and has schools ranked among the best in Colorado. What do you think? Should vouchers only be used with lower-income students? Should they never be used? Do they violate the constitution?

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William, one more thing. I know of people in the private sector who have sued for being fired unjustly and won. Teachers can get laid off like any other worker, they can't be dismissed at the whim of the principal.

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See William, in reference to the SAT scores, the other states have less participants because the kids just aren't prepared. Try to look beyond the surface. Maybe you could use a course in statistics to understand it better.

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If you guys really like the ideas of vouchers, it would be more honest just to say so. Quoting facts and statistics that don't exist really isn't productive. If you really want vouchers, you have to come up with positive reason why they should be, not by attacking the very profession voucher schools would depend on. If your doctor knew you were a malpractice suing malcontent, you think he would want to treat you and give you his best?

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Steven -
You think people should just say so if they really like the idea of vouchers?
Is there something lacking in your comprehension ability?
Good Lord - how can it be any clearer - YES - People really like the idea of vouchers!
Why is that so hard to grasp?
Nobody is attacking any profession.
Why do you insist on attacking the hopes of American children that they may be able to get educated by teachers, not government bureaucrats?
If a desperate child came begging you to help him to a future - if some taxpayers and parents came begging you to help prevent the confiscation of their hard-earned money to be wasted with ever more negative result...do you think you might put your personal agrandizement aside and consider the actual facts?...

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Well gentleman, I know your position and you know mine. If I got a little terse along the way, I apologize, but some of you brought it out of me. Again, I base my position on facts. When you can prove otherwise, I may be swayed. Until then, try to show some respect to the professionals who are trusted with the education of your children. I promise you, it will go a long way in making teachers feel appreciated and not scapegoats. Have a great weekend and I bid you peace.

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The only way to effect “real change” in public education is to offer a better deal to parents by making tuition refund vouchers available to every parent or guardian of a child in an under-performing public school. When enrollments in such schools start to drop (as inevitably they will), you’ll see rapid and positive changes in our nation’s public schools as well. That was the whole idea behind the federally funded D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, signed into law by President Bush in 2004.

This program awarded an annual scholarship of up to $7,500 per child for families in the District of Columbia whose income is at or below the federal poverty level. According to former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, in 2007-2008 the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program made it possible for “1,900 students from the under-performing Washington public school system … to attend private or religious schools of their choice.” Hopes were high that this program would be continued under the new administration in 2009. [See Margaret Spellings “Save D.C.’s Vouchers” Washington Post (July 8, 2008).]

It didn’t happen. In September 2009, Congress and President Obama killed the D. C. Opportunity Scholarship program. “My vote for the worst scandal in America right now,” wrote John Fund in the Wall Street Journal, “is the education monopoly that keeps poor, inner-city kids trapped in failing public schools. Special mention here goes to the politicians who oppose giving these children the choice to escape even as they send their own kids to private or elite public schools.”

D.C. politicians are not the only ones who contradict themselves. One of the favorite arguments of the teachers unions is this: “The only act of educational reform that has any verifiable positive effect on learning is reduced class size.” If that’s true, then why do they oppose a solution that will reduce class size by allowing parents to send their children to private and parochial schools?

In fact, though, it’s not true. According to a Cato Institute report, “There have been close to 300 separate studies nation-wide on the relationship between class size and student achievement. … only 15 percent of them suggest that reducing class size improves student learning as measured by standardized tests.” In addition, the report cites a Thomas B. Fordham Foundation study demonstrating “that teacher qualifications matter far more than class size.” [See “Let’s Rethink the Class Size Amendment” (www.cato.org).]

As Stanford University Professor Terry M. Moe has observed: “When the teachers unions want government to act, the reforms they demand are invariably in their own interests.” [See “No Teacher Left Behind” in The Wall Street Journal (January 13, 2005).] The real problem is the power and influence of teachers unions that have systematically blocked all constructive efforts at reform and set up artificial barriers to the hiring of teachers qualified to teach such specific subjects as mathematics, science, English and history.

Steven Brill’s new book Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools indicates resurgence of hope for change. His basic premise is that good teachers can “overcome student indifference, parental disengagement and poverty.” The problem is the teachers unions are still so powerful that no Teach for America or Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) can possibly be funded and scaled fast enough to reverse the public schools status quo. Even big guns like Brill are now being told by tired Teach for America drop-outs like Sara Mosle that “reformers need to collaborate with unions, if only because they [the unions?] are ‘the organizational link to enable school improvement to expand beyond the ability of the extraordinary people to work extraordinary hours.’” [See “Report Card” in The New York Times Book Review (Aug. 21, 2011).]

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Then show us a study that suggests vouchers yields positive results above and beyond their public school counterparts. Rand has done such a study and has found no difference between the two. They don't even take into account privately funded and voucher schools get to choose who they let in. The reason many inner city schools is due more about where do resources get allocated and supporting the teachers that are already there. The turnover at those schools is way above the norm. The union doesn't oppose creating inner city schools that work. Their problem is that the failures are being totally blamed on the teachers.

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Your point about class size can be answered this way. Which schools consistently do better? The ones that pay teachers highly and have smaller classes. So, which is it? I think the two go hand in hand. If you ever taught in an inner city school, you wouldn't be saying class size doesn't matter. 20 hard to teach students is much more manageable than 34 of them, which is typical in NYC.

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Agreed.Vouchers force schools to accept parents as "customers" by giving them an option to take their money elsewhere. Just like any other business, schools have to respond by improving the product or they will lose the customers.

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I truly wish more citizens would understand as you do. This issue is about our free enterprise system and about the need to end the stranglehold monopoly public schools have had on education in America for more than 50 years.

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The point is, schools are not businesses. They aren't there for the sole purpose of making a profit. You are comparing apples to oranges. In other countries, where schools supposedly are doing better, all have public school systems. No one has shown voucher schools do better than public schools. The problems are deeper than that. As someone has already pointed out, schools fail for different reasons. The best predictor of student failure is poverty and coming from a single parent home. Schools in such areas do not get the resources or support they need. The best predictor of student success is the wealth of the school district. Maybe school taxes should be collected on the state level and distributed on a per pupil basis. But, it's easier to blame teachers. Class size is more of a factor in lower class neighborhoods and less of a factor in higher class neighborhoods. I can go on and on. Show me a study that shows voucher schools, in general, do better than their public counterparts. While you're at it, go read the Rand study on voucher schools. The ideological rhetoric sounds good, so people go for it. Did anyone do the research to see if it really works? There are many case studies already out there.

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While I am for vouchers as well, taxes give us no individual rights at all.

Just like the payroll tax or FICA as most folks know it, is supposed to pay for Social Security for US we, in fact have NO RIGHT to receive Social Security payments. The congress can change the rules at will and we will have absolutely no recourse in law. However, if we had put all of the payroll tax money into our own annuities we would know exactly what we could expect when we retired, AND have recourse if they tried to short us.

Reliance on government for personal protection is a exercise in futility; most folks don't know it, but the Supreme Court has even ruled that we do not have a PERSONAL right to police protection. Think about that!!

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The countries that people, who are proponents for vouchers, say do better than we do all have public school systems. Free enterprise is not the force behind their schools. They put a lot more resources into their schools. Teachers are respected and teaching is a respected profession. Just like it was here after World War II. So, your thesis has holes. Free enterprise has made a mockery out of the proprietary schools. When profit is the motive, education is at the bottom of the list. Not one of you has shown a study that conclusively shows that voucher schools do better than there public school counterparts.

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Another nail in the coffin of public schools, its teachers, and administrators...

From WSJ 30 Sep 2011Saving Catholic EducationOver 50 years, the U.S. Catholic school population has dropped by almost two-thirds.By RICHARD RIORDAN

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Catholic Education Foundation announced a campaign to raise $100 million for Catholic schools in our area.

Catholic education in the United States is in dire straits. A report from Loyola Marymount University in June found that Catholic schools continue to close even though they graduate 98% of their high school students and send almost all of them onto college. In the early 1960s, the U.S. had over 13,000 Catholic schools with 5.5 million students. Today there are 6,900 schools with two million students. In the Los Angeles area, enrollment has fallen by 20% over the past 10 years, to 80,000 students from 100,000. This trend is due not to lack of demand, but to the inability of parents to pay tuition.

The urban poor are more desperate than ever for Catholic education. Urban public schools have failed these families, graduating approximately 30% of Los Angeles high school students in four years. Catholic schools are their best hope—something I know from personal experience.

Catholic schools shaped my spiritual, intellectual and social growth. This included grammar school (where I got a very good education despite having 55 students in my classroom), high school and then college. I remember vividly my third-grade teacher reading to us for a half-hour every day. It started me on a lifelong love of reading. I remember the ethic of service the nuns and lay teachers instilled in me. I was taught that the poor were not to be pitied—they wanted only to be given the opportunity to succeed. And the fortunate had an obligation to help.

So why are Catholic schools the answer to our urban education woes? Aren't charter schools beginning to help this underserved population? Charter schools are an amazing development, and I've chaired the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools and the Inner City Education Foundation, both charter advocacy organizations. But not everyone will be able to attend charter schools because the capacity isn't there.

Charter schools are public schools that receive the same dollars as other public schools (in California, $7,500 per student). By contrast, Catholic schools rely on private contributions (averaging $4,000 per student) and tuition (averaging $2,500 per student) from some of our poorest families. In terms of graduation rates, only the very best charter schools in Los Angeles are on par with Catholic schools.

Catholic schools infuse beliefs, values and standards that children will carry all their lives. They provide a safe learning environment for those from high-crime neighborhoods as well as structure and a faith-based education. The schools create a sense of community and an expectation that every child will achieve his or her goals.

Many students in Catholic schools are not Catholic. As Catholic school teachers often say, "We provide this education not because the students are Catholic but because we are." Our faith calls us to it.

So how can we provide the gift of Catholic education to the thousands of struggling families who want it but could never scrape together an extra $2,000 or $3,000 a year? Of the 17,500 applications the Los Angeles Catholic Education Foundation received for financial aid last year, 17,000 qualified for a tuition award. But the foundation could afford to give awards to only 8,400 students. The average income level for a family of four who received tuition assistance last year was $21,500. We believe that if we increase our endowment by $100 million, we will be able to offer scholarships to all deserving children for decades to come.

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Yes, education has now become the playground for the rich and powerful. One persons opinion. By the way, in NYC, Catholic schools are charging parents more and more. Where the parents can't afford it, they are closing.

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The poor are not getting educated anyway... by the wonderful public school system.

The results of a wonderful secular public education... Thanks but no thanks...

From Dennis Prager:

Last week, David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Below are some excerpts from Brooks' summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. (It was led by "the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith.")"Smith and company asked about the young people's moral lives, and the results are depressing ..."When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn't answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all ..."Moral thinking didn't enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner ..."The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste ..."As one put it, 'I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn't speak on behalf of anyone else as to what's right and wrong ..."Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it's thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart."Ever since I attended college, I have been convinced that either "studies" confirm what common sense suggests or that they are mistaken. I realized this when I was presented with study after study showing that boys and girls were not inherently different from one another, and they acted differently only because of sexist upbringings.This latest study cited by David Brooks confirms what conservatives have known for a generation: Moral standards have been replaced by feelings. Of course, those on the left believe this only when a writer at a major liberal newspaper cites an "eminent sociologist."What is disconcerting about Brooks' piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend -- namely, secularism.The intellectual class and the left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than "yummy" and "yucky." They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, "There is no answer to the question, 'Why not be cruel?'"With the death of Judeo-Christian-God-based standards, people have simply substituted feelings for those standards. Millions of American young people have been raised by parents and schools with "How do you feel about it?" as the only guide to what they ought to do. The heart has replaced God and the Bible as a moral guide.And now, as Brooks points out, we see the results. A vast number of American young people do not even ask whether an action is right or wrong. The question would strike them as foreign. Why? Because the question suggests that there is a right and wrong outside of themselves. And just as there is no God higher than them, there is no morality higher than them, either.Forty years ago, I began writing and lecturing about this problem. It was then that I began asking students if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority always voted against the stranger -- because, they explained, they loved their dog and they didn't love the stranger.They followed their feelings.Without God and Judeo-Christian r...